


Latch Fuse

by dansunedisco



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Android!Jensen, Community: spnkink_meme, Happy Ending, Humor, M/M, Robot Feels, Schmoop, Science Fiction, Sex with robots, Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 06:34:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1595165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dansunedisco/pseuds/dansunedisco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this <a href="http://spnkink-meme.livejournal.com/85341.html?thread=32216413#t32216413">prompt</a> over at the spnkink_meme LJ comm: <i>Android!Jensen/Jared, Jared finds Jensen in a storage unit.</i></p><p>Jared discovers Jensen, an advanced android with a secret, in a storage unit floating somewhere in the galactic version of Bumfuck, Nowhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Latch Fuse

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning: there is definite robot/human relations in this fic. Nothing truly explicit, but it's there. Android!Jensen's agency is definitely established, but I realize this might not be everyone's cup of tea.
> 
> Also: lots of switching back and forth between "robot", "android", and other similar terms. Work is unbeta'ed as well.

It was all Chad’s fault. The bottle of tequila hadn’t helped at all, either. 

If Jared had been smarter, he would’ve turned tail the moment Chad had pulled the contraband from his duffle bag. He sure as hell knew better than to trust that squinty-eyed bastard.

The two of them had been “best friends” growing up. It was the kind of friendship where Chad played the part of the bad influence, and Jared stared in his role as the exasperated and unwilling accomplice. Jared’s momma had constantly been trying to pull him away from the Murray household, whereas Chad’s mom had been more than happy to dump her little angel on the next sucker who’d showed a little interest. 

Their duo had lasted all the way through college, a small forest fire, and a handful of misdemeanors. After graduation, they’d split ways to opposite ends of the galaxy. Jared, to continue his studies in veterinary sciences; Chad, to escape the letter of the law… to absolutely no one’s surprise.

But the universe wasn’t too cruel to keep them apart, and they’d reunited on Eplison-5, outbound to Gamma Orion, when Jared had missed his connecting shuttle on the last hop, and after Chad had won his ticket from a sketchy poker game.

“Jay-red,” Chad had crowed, slithering out from the shadows of one of the holding bays.

“ _Chad_?” Jared had groaned.

It had only taken a few hours for Chad to get down to business like they were 14 again, trying to convince Jared to do him a solid by purchasing a row of storage units that were “Just floating somewhere between Gamma Orion and VX-280. Space bandits are out for this asshole if I don’t unload them by—well, yesterday, technically, but I’m sure if you take ‘em off my hands today I could play the time difference card. So, what do ya say? For old times’ sake?”

Jared, being a very nostalgic and very drunk friend, had agreed.

So, here he was. Standing under the dingy lights of the storage bay, holding the electronic key to twenty-three units. It’d taken three weeks since his run-in with Chad before Mr. Beaver had finally given him time off from the farm to make the three-day trip out.

Now that he was here, he wasn’t quite sure on what to _do_. He just had to hope that whatever was in his lockers wouldn’t lead to his eventual arrest. 

“You need help?”

Jared turned to the man who owned the lot—his name was Mitch, or maybe Misha. “Directions would be nice,” he said. 

Mitch-maybe-Misha rubbed his scruffy beard. “They always need directions,” he grumbled, but dutifully flipped to a new page in his stenopad and sketched out a rudimentary map. He tore the page off and slid it across his desk. “Try not to get lost.”

Jared nodded his thanks and dutifully followed the directions he’d been given. From the outside, the storage unit hadn’t seemed so large. On the inside, it seemed to span lightyears. 

Twenty minutes later, he finally found the row that was his. He unlocked the units one by one, only moving on to the next after an initial sweep inside yielded no worrying objects. He was almost done, just three more to go, when he swiped the e-key under the lock of unit Q-L-D-330. He hauled the door upwards, straining under its considerable weight (they were living in the freakin’ future; some auto-doors would’ve been nice).

All the other units had small fluorescent lights that had switched on when the door opened, but this one stayed pitch black even as he wildly waved his hand inside. He squinted into the darkness. 

“Huh,” he said. “Weird.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, turned its light on, and picked his way through the clutter. This unit was stuffed to the brim with crap—boxes upon boxes; weird little knickknacks; things Jared had never even _heard_ of. He picked up a little metal toy. It looked like a very, very classic car. He put it back down and held his phone up higher, its blue glow illuminating the back corner.

An odd shape came into focus, and it took Jared a blink to realize what it was and scream bloody murder. “Oh my GOD. That’s a fucking body!”

He scrambled backwards, too-long legs and arms swinging around to get him far, far away. He fumbled his phone between a group of boxes, and he cursed long and loudly as the light disappeared. He crawled on his hands and knees in the direction of the unit opening, and ran all the way back to Mitch-maybe-Misha’s desk once he was free.

It took him a good ten hysterical minutes to get the scruffy owner to stop popping his gum and out of his seat.

“Are you sure?” Misha asked—it was definitely Misha. Jared had seen the name placard on his desk. “If I had a dollar for every ‘body’ in a unit, I’d be independently wealthy.”

Jared wiped his sweaty hands on his pants. “Shouldn’t you be calling the authorities? I know what I saw, and it was definitely—what I saw.”

“We’ll see about that,” replied Misha, his tone heavy with skepticism. “Did you notice a smell?”

“A smell?”

“Yeah. A smell. An odor. A pungent bouquet. Did you puke the moment you opened the door or what?”

Jared blinked. Now that Misha mentioned it, the unit hadn’t smelled any better or worse than the others. A little musky, a little dusty, but definitely nothing nasty enough to have him throw up. “I… no, no smell.” 

“See,” Misha said, eyebrows raised up. “No smell, no body. Unless they cyro’ed the chump, but they unfreeze pretty quick out in the open.”

Jared wanted to ask how Misha knew so much about decaying corpses, but they arrived at Q-L-D-330 before he could voice the question.

“You coming with?” Misha whipped his flashlight out. The queasy expression Jared was sure he was wearing must have been word enough, as Misha shrugged and trudged inside.

Jared lingered worriedly by the door. A minute later, he heard Misha yell for him.

“It’s an android.” Misha was crouched down when Jared arrived, flashlight angled at the body—no, android’s—face. “It’s very… hyper-realistic.”

Jared shuffled closer. A barcode was printed on the helix of the android’s ear, a standard mark for humanoid bots. He crouched down next to Misha, and nearly gasped when he got a good look at the bot. Hyper-realistic was right on the money. The android looked human. Not “just like a human”. It looked like a real, living, breathing human being. It was gorgeous, too. Strong jaw, plush lips, thick eyelashes; who’d want to leave something like this locked up?

It was safe to say that Jared’s relief at not finding a body was short-lived. Androids were nothing new, hadn’t been for years. But most robots that were designed to integrate with humans still had a deliberate and distinctly fake look. It wasn’t law, but it might as well have been. The android that was seated up against the wall, arms folded in its lap, legs straight out, chin tilted down onto its chest—it was unlike anything Jared had seen before. Misha, too, by the looks of his bemused expression.

“What do we do with it?” he asked.

“’We’?” Misha propped the flashlight under his chin, casting his face in shadows. “There’s no ‘we’ here, amigo. That’s your property.”

“But—“

“Did you buy lot Q-L-D-330?”

“Yeah, but this is—“

“You own the lot, you own all its contents. Therefore, you own the android. I’m going back to my desk for a nap.”

And, with that, he left Jared with his brand new problem.

 

\---

 

After finding the manual light switch (no thanks to Misha), and then his phone, Jared sat down in front of the android. He tapped the edge of his phone against his chin, very aware that he only had about three hours to kill before he had to hoof it out of Misha’s storage lot and get on a shuttle back to Mr. Beaver’s.

His initial course of action had been to leave everything until after his internship was over, then slowly pick through the junk and see what was salvageable, sellable. But this find? Yeah, it had definitely thrown a wrench into his plans. What to do with it was the million-dollar question.

He had no reason to keep an android for himself. He could barely get by on his own with the measly stipend he received for his internships. There was no way he could afford the upkeep for a simple bot, let alone one as realistic as he one he’d unwittingly purchased.

There was a good chance he could sell it for a pretty penny, though. A robot that looked uncannily real had to be worth a fortune. He’d bet he could even open his own clinic with the payout. But it wouldn’t be fair to unload a potentially useless robot on someone else. If someone left such a treasure to rust in a storage unit in the galactic version of Bumfuck, Nowhere, there was a good chance it ran a stupid program or was nonfunctional.

He nodded, the solution coming to fruition in his mind. He’d wake the android, bring it back to Mr. Beaver’s farm, check for deficiencies, fix it if he had to, and then sell it to the highest bidder.

He rolled up onto his knees and reached out. It was cool to the touch, and the way that its head lolled when he moved it almost made him feel like he was handling a bona fide dead person. He shuddered and quickly pressed almost everywhere he imagined an on-switch could be. Nothing worked. 

“Dude, you are not making this easy on me,” he said in a huff, sitting back on his haunches. “Do me a favor and wake up.”

The bot jerked at his words, as if electrocuted, and began to stir. Jared gasped, a straight shot of adrenaline jacking his heart rate up. He’d seen a few bots activated over the years, though never on voice command.

Stranger yet, this one was acting as if it were actually _waking up_. The bot straightened up from its slump, lifted its arms and ran its hands through its hair. It groaned. Raised its head and blinked up at Jared, mouth hanging slack.

“What—?”

“Um,” he stammered out, “I’m Jared.” 

The bot rolled its neck. “Holy shit. I feel like death warmed over.”

Jared’s eyes were doing a very good attempt at leaping from their sockets. “Are you—are you okay?”

The bot seemed to regain its bearings, whatever they happened to be. “Yeah—I mean, yes. My apologies. I’ve—I’ve been asleep for a very long time. I think my system is buggy.”

He nodded. “Good morning, I guess. I’m Jared, er, already said that. So, I kind of bought this storage unit and I guess… you’re mine now? Do you have a—name or… a model number?”

The bot blinked slowly. It had very, very green eyes. “I’m an A-C-K-L-E-5. My previous owner referred to me as Jensen.”

“Jensen.” Jared smiled tightly. “Well. How about we get you some pants?”

 

\---

 

Mr. Beaver hadn’t been at all pleased to see Jensen. Mostly because he thought Jared had brought himself home a space hooker. But after he had explained the whole situation, Chad and tequila included, Mr. Beaver had settled down and waved the two of them on. 

Jared enjoyed Jensen’s company, though the bot was a little dull. He (yup—Jared had graduated to referring to Jensen in human-terms) never struck up conversation, and Jared’s many attempts at figuring out what, exactly, Jensen’s programming was were all skillfully deflected.

The weird thing was that the behavior Jensen had exhibited when he’d first been activated was nowhere to be seen. Jensen’s excuse had been buggy script but, unless the bot had defragged itself without Jared realizing, he should’ve kept acting… _off_.

Weeks of menial labor passed by, Jared tending to Mr. Beaver’s animals and crops with Jensen right alongside him, before the bot finally spoke unprompted. It gave Jared enough of a start that he almost sliced his palm open on the till blade.

“What do you plan on doing with me?” 

Jared straightened up and tugged his baseball cap further down his forehead. Sweat dripped down his neck, had been since the twin suns had rose to high noon. “Why do you ask?”

Jensen rolled his eyes. “I finally pipe up and you answer my question with a question.” 

Jared boggled. “Dude.”

“I’m sorry,” the bot replied, almost too quickly, face smooth of emotion once more. “Had a glitch. I’m asking because it’s a logical question. I’m not a farming bot, or a medical bot, so I’m not really of any use here.”

“You won’t tell me what kind of bot you are,” he fired back, fully aware that he sounded like a bratty teen not getting his way. “And it sounds like you’ve already drawn your own conclusion.”

Jensen folded his arms across his chest. “So you’re selling me.”

“Never said that.” Jared leaned over the mechanical till. The bot continued to look unimpressed. “Okay, selling you was my original plan. I’ve never had a reason to own a bot, and…“

His words trailed off. Or, rather, they wouldn’t come out. It felt like a lump had lodged itself in his throat.

He was talking to Jensen about _selling him_.Like a piece of property. Which he was, technically, but the act—literally discussing the value of a sentient being (even if it was a some _thing_ instead of a some _one_ ) with said sentient being—put a rotten taste in his mouth.

It must have shown, because a flash of concern fluttered across Jensen’s face. “Jared?”

“Do you want to be here?” he blurted out, fast.

Jensen reached out and pressed the back of his hand against Jared’s cheek. “Do you have heat stroke? We’ve been out for a long time and you’ve barely had any water.”

Jared grabbed Jensen’s wrist. “Just answer the question.”

“I don’t have ‘wants’,” he answered flatly, arm falling back to his side. 

“If you did. Pretend you do. Would you want to be here, with me? If you had a choice.”

“I don’t have a choice. I can’t pretend. I’m not programmed for that.” Jensen’s eyes flickered. “What’s gotten into you?”

Jared pulled his cap off, embarrassed. What indeed? There was a group out there fighting for robot rights. A group most waved off as completely radical and insane, and for good reason. Robots couldn’t feel. They weren’t real. They were intelligent, sure, but they weren’t _human_. Jensen didn’t understand, and he never would. 

“Nothing. Must be the sun. Let’s go back inside before I totally fry.”

Jensen’s eyebrows furrowed together. Jared could almost see the cogs whirring away in his processor. “Sure.”

The walk back to their small accommodations wasn’t a long one, but Jared was almost dead on his feet by the time he passed the threshold. He leaned against the wall with a sigh; smiled weakly at Jensen. The bot peered up at him curiously.

“If I wanted to leave,” started Jensen, tone soft and inquisitive, “would you let me go?”

There was no reason to feel so sick over the thought of it, but Jared’s stomach turned anyway. “Is that what you want?”

Jensen reached out, placed his palm up against Jared’s sternum. “Just answer. Please.” 

“You’re not mine to keep,” said Jared, honestly.

Jensen nodded, as if satisfied with the answer, and shuffled off to the kitchen. He returned with a sweating glass of water that Jared finished in three large gulps.

 

\---

 

For whatever reason—not one that Jared could see, anyway—the day out in the sun had sparked something inside of Jensen. Perhaps literally. Maybe it was malfunction, or overheating, or maybe it was a part of the programming he refused to divulge, but Jensen began to ask questions and speak his mind.

He was curious, inquiring about little things here and there, as if testing his boundaries. Then, as the weeks went by and he seemingly became more comfortable, he graduated to asking Jared about his life before Mr. Beaver’s farm.

Jared didn’t mind one bit. In fact, it was pretty nice.

It hadn’t taken Jared very long to realize exactly how lonely he’d been before Jensen. He liked people, but rocketing from one farm to the next, trying to get a foothold in the vet business while doubling as a laborer, wasn’t conducive to creating interpersonal relationships. He kept in contact with his family and friends back home, but mail wasn’t the same as face-to-face contact.

Jensen was exactly what he needed, perfect in every way. He listened, he snarked, and he laughed at Jared’s stupid jokes. He sassed Jared when he needed it, and backed off when he didn’t. Plus, he was the only one on the farm who didn’t use grunts as a legitimate form of speech.

He was the greatest friend Jared had ever had.

So it probably shouldn’t have surprised him so much when Chad went and messed it all up. 

“What do you _mean_ when you say space bandits are coming for me?”

Chad winced. “I kinda sorta misinterpreted what they wanted me to do with the storage lots.”

Jared spluttered. “How the fuck do you misinterpret something like that?”

“Pretty easy, dude. I don’t speak Russian; they speak Russian. Things get lost in translation when you’re using a glitchy auto-transcriber, you feel me?” 

He breathed deeply in through his nose, trying to desperately dredge up the Zen he needed to think clearly. Chad was so, so lucky they were separated by a thousand miles of space. “What are they looking for?”

“The transcriber says ‘Vodka bottle’, but it’s probably wrong. This thing is kinda racist.”

Jensen stepped in, leaning over Jared, towards the camera. “Do you have their original dialogue?”

Chad completely ignored Jensen’s question, and instead settled for a vulgar wolf-whistle. “Jared, who is this fine intergalactic hottie you’ve been hiding from me?”

Jared groaned, hands flying up to scrub at his face. “Chad, I’m about to be given a Columbian necktie and it’s all your fault. Shut up and focus!”

“Okay, okay. What was the question again?”

“The conversation,” supplied Jensen. “Play it for us.”

Chad fiddled off-screen and held up a little square device. He played what he had, but Jared couldn’t make head or tails of what was being said. When the auto-transcriber switched over to English, Chad clicked it off. 

“That’s it,” he said.

Jensen frowned. “When did they contact you?”

“Yesterday.”

Jensen reached out and turned the transmission off without another word to Chad, and then swung Jared up and around onto his feet with abnormal strength. “We need to leave the farm. Right now.”

Jared gaped. “Can’t we just haggle? I have the e-key for the units. We still have three more weeks before my internship is over!” 

“I’m sure Mr. Beaver can give us a few days off,” said Jensen. “If it makes you feel any better, they’re coming for me, Jay, not you. But I’d really appreciate your help shaking their tail.”

“Wait—how do you know what they—?” 

“Robot,” he pointed out. “I can translate.”

 

\---

 

Mr. Beaver did give them time off. Six days, to be exact. Jared was thankful, of course, though he wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to settle a dispute with a gang of angry space pirates in less than a week.

“And what do you mean, they’re after you?” he asked. He’d been repeating the question in intervals, his poor brain unable to wrap his head around the fact that he may or may be chopped into tiny bits or thrown out of an airlock.

Jensen was tossing a few essentials into Jared’s duffle bag, because Jared’s arms and legs refused to move. “I promise I will explain everything once we’re off the farm. Okay?” 

“Misha told me your lot hadn’t been opened in, like, decades,” Jared rambled on, hands automatically grabbing the duffel bag Jensen shoved into his arms. The bot grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him out of their shared apartment. “Your tech is so advanced... and how did they even know you were in there?”

Jensen pivoted on his heel to face him. “Jared. Do you trust me?”

Jared’s face flushed, but he wasn’t quite sure why. “Yeah.”

“Then trust me when I say I won’t let anything happen to you. Trust me when I say I will explain everything in due time. Just—trust me, okay?” 

The anxiety that had been gripping Jared hard relaxed its hold, just a little bit. “Okay.”

 

\---

 

They borrowed Mr. Beaver’s Impala—an old cruiser that Jensen swore up and down he knew how to fly in the face of Jared’s skepticism—and shuttled off planet without much fanfare. They flew and flew, Jared silent in the co-pilot chair, until the silence between them was more suffocating than it’d ever been.

“How many languages can you speak?” he asked, shattering the quiet. 

Jensen’s eyes flicked over. “Right now? Twelve.” He paused. “It wouldn’t take me long to learn more, though.”

Jared tilted his head to the side, trying to reign in the question that was just begging to jump from the tip of his tongue. Jensen had promised to explain everything in time, but his patience was as thin as a sliver. At the rate they were going, he’d never know. But was that really so bad? Not knowing? 

The answer was so simple that Jared felt halfway stupid when he figured it out. And before he could stop himself, he was blurting it all out: “You don’t have to explain, Jen. I don’t care. I mean—I’d love to know why space pirates are hunting you down… but the rest? Why you were locked up, why you were asleep, what your programming is… it’s not important to me. I mean, it _is_ , because it’s you. But. If you don’t want to tell me, it’s okay. You’re my best friend. Have been for a while. And you deserve to keep your secrets.” 

Jensen looked like Jared had just reached inside of his chest cavity and torn out his mechanical heart. “You sure know how to lay the emotional blackmail on thick.”

“I wasn’t meaning to.”

“I know,” said Jensen. He chewed on his bottom lip—a nervous tick he got into when he was worried Jared was going to fall into the wood chipper, or other similar hazards.

Jared sat up straight, a wave of nervous energy making his legs bounce. 

“I was never meant to leave the lab,” confessed Jensen. “I was a prototype. Both in physical construction and artificial intelligence. The company wanted a bot that could learn, adapt, make its own choices... so they cut out my script, to see what would—could—happen.” 

“But that’s...“ 

“Illegal? Supremely,” he agreed, hands curling into loose fists. “I wasn’t made for one purpose. I was made to be... me. Whatever I wanted to be.” 

Jared tried to wrap his head around what Jensen was telling him. It was unprecedented. Every robot was created for a purpose, able to make decisions, but unable to deviated from the set pattern. If Jensen had free reign... if what he was saying that true...

“I was too successful, I guess. My builder put me to sleep in that lot, to try to save me, but it was damn near the same as killing me,” he continued, face contorting into what looked like pain. “Are we really so different? A brain is just a hub of electric responses, synapses firing every millisecond of your life. It’s the same for me. I—I feel things.”

Jared gasped. He would’ve been at the edge of his seat if he weren’t buckled in. “Like what?”

“I love. I hate. Everything in between. Chad’s recording—they said they wanted me for my processor and my tech. They wanted him to keep me safe, make sure no one else got me.” He lifted his eyes, staring straight at Jared. “But I’m not gonna let ‘em have me.”

Jared unclipped himself from his chair and slid over to Jensen, knees aching against the unforgiving metal floor. “Christ, Jen. I’m not sure that I’m ready for murder.” 

“Jay—”

“And I don’t really want to steal Mr. Beaver’s ship, but there’s, like, seven quadrants we can run away to—“

Jensen clapped his hand over Jared’s mouth. “We’re not running because they won’t stop lookin’, and you can’t be a vagabond veterinarian if you don’t finish at the farm. My builder left a backup drive in the lot with me. We’re gonna give ‘em that instead. No murder, unless they ask for it.”

Jared wrenched Jensen’s hand away. “Why didn’t you say that from the get-go!”

Jensen just laughed. 

“And you’ve been lying to me this whole time!” He jumped up. “Buggy script, my ass! You’re a regular jerk, just like the rest of us.”

“Can you ever forgive me?” Jensen said it coyly, with a smirk and a flutter of his thick eyelashes, but there was just enough of a wobble in his words for Jared to see that he was really asking the question. 

He softened immediately, all the annoyance he’d been feeling at getting got swirling away easily. “It takes three days to get to Misha’s. No more emotional breakdowns or heart-to-hearts until after we’re scot-free, okay?”

“Whatever you say.” Jensen punched away at the transmission pad. “I’m going to send them coordinates to the storage unit. Tell ‘em to meet us their for the trade-off. You ready?” 

Jared nodded. “Do it.”

 

\---

 

“Ah. You’re back.” Misha lowered the newspaper he was reading. He was leaned very far back in his chair, feet propped up on his desk, ankles crossed. “And you brought your friend with you.”

“There may or may not be a gang of vicious space bandits headed this way,” said Jared, as he and Jensen jogged passed Misha’s desk. 

They’d made the trip with barely enough time to spare, and had debarked from the space dock in a mad rush.

“Interestingly, another sentence I hear regularly!” 

Jared wasn’t surprised.

Their search was a frantic one. Though Jensen swore the backups were in the unit, he hadn’t a clue what to look for. 

Jared tore through his box, holding each item he found inside up and shaking them, as if they would declare themselves with a little prompting. Time was dwindling down, if they ever had any to begin with. He pawed through the next box, then the next. Nothing.

He looked up, eyes locking on Jensen’s profile as the bot went through his own box. “How long do we have, you think?” 

He didn’t look up, continued at his search. “Not long. We might’ve gotten a leap ahead, but just barely.”

“Okay then.” Jared swallowed thickly. “Well, in that case, I think you should know that I’m five kinds of infatuated with you.”

Jensen whipped his head around. “Excuse you?”

“I know I said no heartfelt confessions or whatever, I’m pretty sure we’re gonna die if we don’t find the backup, and I don’t want to croak without you hearing me say it. At least once, y’know? I love you, you robotic tool.”

“Fuck.” Jensen looked away, throat working.

Jared hadn’t been expecting an answer to his confession. Not really. But Jensen’s cheeks flushed a faint pink, and his eyes flicked over to him, glossy and hooded under the fluorescent lighting, pink tongue dabbing at his bottom lip like he was dying of thirst. Jared shivered, realizing that he’d seen Jensen look at him that way plenty of times before. And, for once, he was sure he was reading Jensen’s body language just right. 

It was like a straight shot of pure adrenaline. He smiled, manic and too wide, and threw himself back into digging with a renewed fervor.

 

\---

 

“A-ha!”

“That’s a potato peeler, Jared.”

“I know that. But _this_ is what I ‘a-ha’ed for.”

“That’s—that’s it.”

“I know.”

A thump from outside, then Misha’s muffled voice: “Oi! Your bandits are here! What do you want me to tell ‘em?”

“Now or never, huh, Jen?” 

“Now or never, Jay.”

 

\---

 

“Wow.”

Jensen was laughing, leaned over on the doorway to the cockpit.

Jared shoved him. “They were—they were fucking cordial!”

Indeed, the bandits Chad had made out to look like hardcore, psychotic criminals were actually pretty decent guys. Their leader, Sasha, had turned out to be Misha’s younger brother, and was surprisingly apologetic for the misunderstanding. He’d just wanted to further the robotic rights cause with Jensen’s download—deliverable free will, he’d said.

So they’d given Sasha the hardware, turned the e-key back over to Misha, and vowed to stay far, far away from Chad.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Jared growled. “He had me thinking we were running for our lives! I was gonna steal Mr. Beaver’s ship and kill people to make sure I kept you safe.”

Jensen’s laughter trailed off, and suddenly the space between them was choked with tension as Jared remembered his earlier, desperate confession. He blushed, heat trailing up from mid-chest to cheek. He tried to turn away, walk back to the tiny holding bay in the Impala to save face, but Jensen tugged on his shirtsleeve till he lifted his chin to look him straight in the eyes. Then Jensen pressed up onto his tiptoes, lips pressing tenderly against Jared’s.

The kiss sent a shot of warmth into Jared’s stomach, left him feeling dizzy even after Jensen pulled back a fraction. He placed shaking, steadying, hands onto Jensen’s shoulders, amazed at the warmth radiating back into his palms.

“You okay?” he asked, voice too unsteady to say much more.

Jensen slid closer, hands settling over Jared’s hipbones. “Never better.”

He bent down and recaptured Jensen’s mouth. He didn’t want to question anything—not Jensen’s motives, nor his own. He just wanted, and he took what Jensen let him. They kissed for what seemed like hours, Jared drinking his fill, letting the fever build slowly between them. Jensen broke away to trail soft kisses and sharp nips against his jaw and throat, humming happily at Jared’s every breathy moan and gasp.

When it got to be too much, Jared guided Jensen backwards, walking them towards the cramped cabin and the tiny bed that could barely fit Jared, let alone the both of them. But they made it work; Jared on his back, legs hanging off the side and the end, with Jensen curled over him. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but they were perfect together.

“I knew you were the one,” Jensen whispered, mouthing gently at the bruise he’d been working into Jared’s neck. “You made me light up like a supernova, every time.”

Jared panted, hips unconsciously twisting up to grind slowly against Jensen’s thigh. “Promise me. Promise this is real.”

Jensen shimmied down, almost sitting on Jared’s knees, hands quickly rucking up Jared’s shirt.

And then he was kissing soft and torturous against trembling skin, then lower, nuzzling at the soft hairs trailing down into Jared’s pants. He popped the button through the hole, tugged pants and boxers down with one great heave; swallowed Jared down to the root without warning, tongue flicking, throat gagging, head bobbing, and it was more than a little embarrassing that Jared came so quick, a wrecked shout—“Oh!”

Jensen pulled off and crawled up, blanketing Jared’s body with his own. “I promise. I promise this is real. Every single thing.” 

Jared ran his hand through Jensen’s short hair. They still had three days to go before they would reach Mr. Beaver’s farm, and another three weeks before they were free to go. From there—well, who knew? All he knew for sure was that he had Jensen, and that was enough to go on for now.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
